


Nightmares

by fiacresgirl



Category: Arrow (TV 2012)
Genre: Emotional Hurt/Comfort, F/M, Hurt/Comfort, Nightmares, PTSD
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-07-15
Updated: 2015-08-01
Packaged: 2018-04-09 12:50:52
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 7,622
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4349483
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/fiacresgirl/pseuds/fiacresgirl
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In the aftermath of the past year's horrific losses, Oliver and Felicity help each other deal with some of the trauma that comes out in their dreams. Lots of angst. Previous relationships are discussed.</p><p>1 - Кошмар (Oliver's Nightmare)<br/>2 - Everyone Leaves (Felicity's Nightmare)<br/>3 - Sara</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Кошмар (Oliver's Nightmare)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Oliver has a very disturbing dream that tells Felicity something about the fear and pain he carries. Lots of angst.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I've really wanted to explore Oliver's mental health for awhile, so this is my first attempt. It's pretty angsty. I'm setting it aside because tonally it doesn't work with the other things I've been writing.

Felicity woke to the scream. It was, well, she didn’t want to be overly dramatic and call it bloodcurdling, but she’d thought for an awful moment there might be a panther in the room. Or a banshee. She squinted at Oliver’s side of the bed, and he was sitting up facing away from her, hunched over, his hands balled against his eyes, shaking like a leaf. The whole bed was shaking along with him.

She sat up and then rolled to her knees so she could put a hand on his shoulder. He flinched when she touched him, and she didn’t know if she could handle him going through his lengthy exploration of fear and self-loathing tonight. He’d had so little sleep this week. So she threaded her arms underneath his elbows and pulled herself into his body. “You had a dream,” she said.

Oliver nodded. His back was still tense, vibrating a bit, and he was covered in sweat. She kissed his shoulder. “Want to tell me what it was about?”

He shook his head. “Just another nightmare,” he said.

“The one about the Amazo?”

“No. Hong Kong.”

That didn’t really narrow it down. She now knew a handful of things about his experience in Hong Kong, and all of them would have left most people mouthing gibberish in the loony bin. “Was it the one with Akio?”

He shook his head again, and she could feel the way the muscles in his back were shifting that he was going to pull away. And then he would spend half the night in the other room staring out the window, seeing nothing but Hong Kong or Lian Yu or wherever. This time she was determined. She wasn’t going to let the dreams have him tonight. He was hers, and they could just take a number. So she lifted his arm and slid herself into his lap, and then she replaced her hands around his chest and squeezed as hard as she could. “Stay,” she said. She put a finger on his lower lip. “Tell me. The stuff in here that needs to come out - that is literally screaming to get out - let it out.”

Oliver sighed heavily. “It was...it was...Waller. She had just finished with the water again - there was a lot of water - and I still hadn’t told her where the Yamashiros were, and I knew - I knew - she was going to send someone for Thea. She couldn’t get to my mother, but she could have Thea killed. I was pulling on the restraints with all of my weight, and somehow I broke free and I grabbed Waller...I was about to snap her neck, but when I looked down...when I looked down…”

Felicity smoothed the damp hair at his temple with two fingertips. “When you looked down?”

Oliver took a deep breath and then let it out. “When I looked down, I wasn’t holding her. I was holding you.”

“Me?” Her hand stilled.

“Yes, and you looked...you looked like you did that night in Nanda Parbat with your hair down around your face and your glasses...and you were smiling up at me, and I couldn’t…” He sighed again. “I couldn’t hurt you. I backed away from you, and I rubbed my eyes, and when I opened them again, there was Waller shoving this knife in my heart.”

“Oh, Oliver,” Felicity said. She nestled her head in underneath his chin and squeezed him again. She knew she could squeeze him really hard without hurting him, so she gave it an Olympic effort.

“And then I woke up,” he said.

She thought it through. Some of this, probably most of this had actually happened, she guessed. But that’s not the part that had him fleeing her bed every night this week. It was the last bit, she’d put money on it. “The awful part is the the part with me in it?”

"Yeah,” he said.

“Because you feel vulnerable? Because I might hurt you? I might betray you?”

He pulled his head back sharply, “No! No, nothing like that.” His hand drifted up from the bed and began caressing the hair at her neck.

“Well, if you don’t think I’m going to go rogue and carve your heart out, why is my part in the dream the worst part?”

His hand stilled. “Because in the dream, I know it’s not really you, but it feels like you. It even smells like you, like lavender water. And I think about killing you. I really think about it.”

“Because you know it’s not me.”

“I can’t decide, and it’s during that part that I wake up - when I’m wondering if I can do it.”

“But you _don’t_ do it,” Felicity said.

“There’s a part of me that thinks I could. That I could kill the person who looks like you to save myself, and it’s that thought that wakes me up, that’s woken me up the last four nights.”

“It’s not you dying?” she asked.

“No,” Oliver said. “I die all the time in my dreams. It’s that I think I could hurt you, and that’s the most frightening thing I’ve ever thought. I can’t stand it. _I can’t stand it_. I wake up and I have to put some space between us until I can get the image of your neck in my hands out of my head.”

“So,” she said slowly, “you think you’re going to hurt me?” This was fairly textbook PTSD: trouble sleeping, reliving horrors in dreams, and intrusive violent thoughts. Clearly, this variation on a theme was tormenting him, though.

“No,” he said, eyes widening. “No! I’d rather cut off my own hands. I’d rather stab _myself_ in the chest.”

She put her hand on his Bratva tattoo and traced it lightly. “I’d rather you not stab yourself in the chest, Oliver,” she said. “You _know_ you’re not going to hurt me.”

His gaze flitted over her face and then skittered away. He shook his head.

“Is there a single part of you that wants to hurt me?” she asked.

“No. Not any part. Ever.” He swallowed. “The thing is, this fear, it’s not irrational. I’ve killed, Felicity. You know that I’ve killed a lot of people. Sometimes it was easy; it was too easy. And I know that most of the time it was for a reason, it was defensive or a situation where it was either them or me, but, your body…” He ran his hand down her spine and fitted his large palm at its base. “You’re so small and vulnerable. I’ve spent hours, days, thinking about how to protect you: your face, your neck, your back, your heart...how to keep everything in you alive and in one piece. The flip side of that is that I know…”

“How easy it would be hurt me?”

“I hurt my mother once. It was right after I came home, and she startled me awake from a nightmare. Not this one,” he said. “A different one. Since then, there’s been a part of me that has always felt like maybe I _should_ be in prison - a part that _wanted_ to be locked away - because then everyone I love would be safe from me.”

Felicity felt a tear slide down her cheek. It ran down into the corner of her mouth, and she tasted its saltiness when she opened it and said, “Oliver.”

“No, I’m serious. This is the worst. This is the one I can’t stand. The rest of the dreams...my fears...are awful, but I can live with them.” His hand came up again, and he pressed her into him. “But to hurt you…”

“Oliver,” she said, “You’re not going to hurt me. I don’t believe it. I can’t believe it. I’ve seen you. I’ve felt you. You’ve never hurt me.”

“I know, but what if I did?” he asked in thin voice. “I just think...after I have these dreams...maybe I should go away and keep myself from you. So you can be safe from me.”

The tears were tiny rivulets now, running down her face. She grabbed his cheeks with both of her hands. “There is _no_ part of me that wants to be kept from _any_ part of you. _Ever_. We’ve done that, we’ve done that a lot, and I just _can’t_ again, Oliver. Do you hear me?”

Oliver nodded. His eyes were shiny too, but he gulped and nodded again, emphatically. “I don’t want that either,” he said. “I think now, though, having spent these last weeks with you, having been with you like this, every day...I think that if that were taken away from me, I wouldn’t want to live. I don’t think I could.”

Felicity rolled her eyes the tiniest bit in frustration. She couldn’t help it. She was glad it was dark, though. What was this whole conversation about? She didn’t want to lose him, and he didn’t want to leave. And yet - there was something he needed from her. It wasn’t an inspirational speech this time, she was sure of that.

She wiped at her eyes, and sniffed. The facts were: Oliver was never going to hurt her, but his fears - his chaotic mess of fears - needed taming. He was struggling with doing it himself, so she had to help. She pulled his big hands - those hands that had held a bow and a gun and had had to use them too often - she pulled those hands to her face, and she held them there with her own.

“So here is my face,” she said. “Do you want to hurt it?”

“No,” he said.

“Hold it,” she said. “Feel the bones under your fingers. Trace them.” Oliver obediently moved the pads of his fingers over her cheekbones, but so so gently. “I’m touching these fingers that are touching my face, and these fingers can’t hurt me. Not here.” She then tugged his hands down to her neck. He flinched a little.

Felicity pulled her hair up off her neck and twisted it up into a little knot. Oliver had already removed his hands, so she ran hers down his arms and threaded her fingers through his. She kissed his hands, both of them, and then firmly placed them on her neck again. “All the way around,” she said. “Feel my breathing and my pulse. You are holding my life in your hands, and I am not afraid of you. Feel.”

His hands, so big they overlapped on her neck, were shaking a little, but he kept them there. She looked up at him, holding his tortured gaze, and let a minute pass, then two. She lifted her hands to his and covered them. “I’m touching these hands that are touching my neck, and they can’t hurt me. Not here.” She then pulled them down to the base of her spine.

“Touch me here,” she said. “You’ve touched me here so many times, grabbed me, guided me, held my spine in place, and I know you’ll never hurt me there. Touch me.”

He gently smoothed his hands over the skin there. It recognized his touch. The roughness of his fingertips at the base of her back never failed to raise goosepimples. “Mmmm,” she said,  maneuvering his hands from her back towards her stomach. He paused them at her sides and caressed there slowly up and down. She lifted her chin and kissed his mouth softly, lingering, and his postured eased fractionally.

What was the script? Oh, yes. “I’m touching these hands that are touching my back, and they can’t hurt me. Not here.”

She looked him in the eye. “Can they?”

Oliver bit his lip and shook his head. “No. Not here...not here.”

Finally, she pulled his hands up to her heart, and pressed them against it. “And here,” she said. “Feel my heart beating. It’s beating faster because your hands are on me, but not because I’m afraid. I’m touching these hands that are touching my heart, and they can’t hurt me. Not here.”

Oliver leaned forward and pressed his forehead to hers. She felt a tear fall on her face, and she would have wiped it away, but her own face was so wet already, there didn’t seem to be a point. She held his hands there for a long time. Five minutes, 10 minutes they sat there, clasping hands over her heart, their tears intermingling, and then finally, finally his posture changed and he slumped forward tugging her into him tightly.

“Felicity,” he said roughly, “You don’t know...you can’t know…”

“Shhh,” she said, hugging him back. “It doesn’t matter. Just don’t leave, Oliver. Please don’t leave me.”

“I won’t,” he said, his voice breaking. “I won’t, Felicity. Ever.”

“You have this dream again, you tell me,” she said. “All right? We can’t deal with this together if you hold all this to yourself. It hurts me to see you in pain.”

“All right,” Oliver said. “I’ll tell you.”

“Good,” Felicity said. Then she pushed him over onto the bed. “Now hold me because I’m tired, and we both need to sleep. You be the big spoon.”

She felt him smile back at her in the dark, “Okay,” he said. “I’ll be the big spoon. But the little spoon can’t press her cold feet against the big spoon’s handle - got it?”

Felicity craned her neck around, kissed him hard on the mouth, and then pulled his arms around her. “The little spoon does what she wants,” she said and closed her eyes.

And behind her Oliver nodded slowly. “Everyone knows about the little spoon,” he said, and kissed her gently on the top of her head, relaxing his weight into her back. 


	2. Everyone Leaves (Felicity's Nightmare)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Felicity has a nightmare about Nanda Parbat, and Oliver talks her through her anger and fear.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Felicity's been through a lot in the past couple of years. I'm sure her dreams aren't always very peaceful either. This is an exploration of some of the stuff I think she'd be dealing with after Nanda Parbat. Pretty angsty.

Felicity awoke with a scream, clutching her throat. She could still feel the dirty stone floor and the metal shackles on her wrists as she fought to stay conscious, to stay alive. She sat up, her chest heaving, waiting for  the Nanda Parbat dungeon to fade from her vision. From his side of the bed Oliver rolled over and touched her. His fingers were hot, and they felt like a brand on her back. She jumped.

“Shhh, shhh,” he said, lifting himself on one arm and peering at her in the dark. “What’s the matter? You okay?” His hand hovered and then settled lightly on her arm. She closed her eyes and breathed in. This was Oliver’s touch, _Oliver’s_. Not Al Sah-Him’s, not a stranger’s.

“Dream,” she said, swallowing. “Nanda Parbat.”

“In the catacombs?”

She shook her head. “Dungeon,” she said. “After Ra’s threw the bio-weapon at us, and you left.”

Oliver’s hand left her arm, but she felt his weight shift on the bed as he arranged himself behind her.

“This is the third time you’ve had this dream in two weeks,” he said. “I think we should talk about it.”

Felicity bit her lower lip. “What’s there to say? It was awful, and I was scared, but it’s over now, and hopefully we’ll never see that place again.” She wrapped her arms around herself. “Ever, ever again.”

Oliver leaned into her, and she felt his lips touch her hairline. She tried for a little levity. “I’m completely serious,” she said. “If Malcolm invites us for whatever the hell holidays they celebrate in his League cult, you’ll have to make our excuses. I won’t go. Not even for Thea.”

“Felicity,” he said.

“What?” she asked, her voice breaking.

“The worst thing,” Oliver said, “what’s the worst thing in your dream? The scariest?”

Images skittered through her mind. Black leather, cold blue eyes, a door closing. “I don’t know,” she said, giving a little wave of her hand. “It’s all pretty awful. You were there.”

“I was.” He leaned over to the bedside table and turned on the light. She got a quick glimpse of the quiet, gentle expression on his face before she looked away.

“I’m beginning to think,” he said, “after all of these dreams and considering how they affect you after, how you pull away from me...I think the problem _is_ that I was there.”

“No,” she said. “No.” She shut her eyes tightly, but it didn’t stop the tear from running down her face. She felt Oliver’s finger trace the path it took down to her mouth.

“That’s it, isn’t it?” he asked.

A sob slipped from her mouth, and he gathered her in his arms, pulling her head under his chin. “Just tell me, Felicity. It won’t make everything better, but it will probably help. I can take it.”

“It’s just,” she said after a long moment, “it’s just that...Your face was so cold. You were the only person in the room for me then. I got that feeling, that horrible feeling like you’re watching something through a telescope, and you can’t tear your eyes away…your vision recedes...

“I looked at you, and there was nothing of you looking back at me. I couldn’t see the tiniest part of you. Your eyes…” She pulled her head out from under his chin and looked up at him. “They were icy. Empty. And this was _after_ you had kidnapped Lyla and left Sara in her crib. And after you watched all of us be taken captive. And I was still hoping! I was hoping all the way to Ra’s audience room and your bridal announcement, all the way up until you closed the dungeon door and walked away. I was still hoping that I was wrong, that you did care, that you had a plan, and you weren’t trying to murder us!”

Oliver held her gaze steadily. “I wasn’t trying to kill you,” he said. “I was trying to save you. All of you. I just...I didn’t have a lot of options. I had to make Ra’s believe he’d turned me, that I was Al Sah-Him.”

“You gave me nothing to go on, Oliver,” she said, her voice accusing. “Nothing. Not a goddamn thing. How could I know we weren’t going to die down there, abandoned by Evil You?”

“Felicity, I did. I gave you _what I could_. I told you to trust me! I told you that we were all dead if you didn’t. I stopped Maseo from searching you on that rooftop. I had Diggle brought to me so I could see if you were all right.”

“And you married Nyssa!” Felicity stabbed her finger into his chest. “You _married her_. How could you do that? She’s a lesbian! And we had just made love in the red sex room!” She ground her teeth together. “What the hell, Oliver?”

He pulled back and looked at her disbelievingly. “Is this about _Nyssa_? Of all the things that happened in Nanda Parbat, Felicity - how can this be about Nyssa? She loved Sara. She openly dislikes me. She attacked me with a knife at our wedding!”

“Good!” Felicity said, poking him again. “Good for her! No woman wants to be handed over like chattel to a man. A big, obtuse, meat slab of a man with icy blue eyes. And no heart at all!”

Oliver enclosed her hand in his and held it away from his chest. “So you _wanted_ her to stab me?”

“Yes! No! At that point, I wanted to stab you. I mean, you know I don’t want to hurt you, you _know_ I don’t, but, Oliver, you _married_ her!”

“I didn’t marry her,” he said.

Felicity glared at him.

“I made no promises to her, Felicity. She made no promises to me. We stood up in front of the priestess who said some words, and that was that. The whole things was done under duress, neither of us wanted it, and we couldn’t mean less to each other now. I can’t believe you’re jealous about Nyssa.”

“You announced to everyone - and Ray! - that you were marrying her, and then you looked me in the eye unflinching. What was I supposed to feel about that?”

“I don’t know. I was more concerned about your safety than your feelings at that moment. I wanted to get you out of Nanda Parbat alive. I didn’t want you there in the first place. I don’t know why you’re fixated on this; I even got Malcolm to annul it. Nyssa’s not my girlfriend. I don’t love her. I never slept with her.”

“Like that would matter,” she said bitterly.

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“It means that you fucked a lot of women you never loved. And vice versa, although maybe not. You probably fucked all the women you loved too.”

“ _Excuse me_?”

“Oliver, you’ve slept with a lot of women, and the sex meant nothing to you. They meant nothing to you. So how do I know that...that…”

She felt Oliver’s chest relax as he slowly released the breath he’d been holding. The hand holding her finger relaxed too. “The sex we have means something to me?” Oliver asked. “That you mean something to me?”

She turned her head away.

“How can you not know?” he asked. “Felicity.”

She trained her vision on the corner of the room farthest away. The clock on the opposite wall had large hands, but they were getting too blurry to read. She swiped at her eyes with her free hand.

He took her chin and dragged her eyes to his face. “You have to know I love you,” he said. “That this, with you, is everything I want. It’s everything I’ve ever wanted since before I even knew I wanted it.” He put a hand on her shoulder. “I know I pretended that I didn’t care for that little window of time, but every other day before and every day since, what have my eyes been saying?”

She pursed her mouth and bit down on her inner lip until it hurt.

“What have they been saying? Are they still cold?” He looked at her, and his eyes were like the blue ocean, buoyant, summer warm, dappled with sunshine. He moved his hand gently to the back of her neck, and he kissed her forehead.

She pressed her face into his chest and let the sobs take her. He slowly stroked her hair, top to bottom, over and over, until she was all cried out. It took kind of a long time. The clock on the wall, the one with the big hands, ticked out the minutes, although it was awhile before she was aware of the sound.

“What is it you’re afraid of? That I’ll stop caring? That I’ll leave?” he asked. He pulled off his t-shirt and used it to wipe her face. It was worn and soft and smelled like him, unsurprisingly. She wanted to bury her face in it and keep it as a blankie. She wrapped it around her fist and sighed.

“Everyone leaves,” she said. “Eventually.”

Oliver frowned. “You think I’m going to leave?” He reached for his t-shirt, but she clasped it to her chest. “Come on now, where would I go to? I’ve been a bunch of places that don’t have you in them, and they’re terrible. Hell, the places you’re usually in seem empty and confusing when you’re not there. Why would I want to leave you?”

“Why does anyone want to leave? I’ve never understood it. I don’t like to leave people. I’ve spent my whole life trying to stay with people, trying to make people want to stay with me. They don’t. Even my father didn’t, and I’m pretty sure he didn’t have any other kids.”

“Felicity,” he said. “I don’t know how such a foolish man could have produced such a brilliant daughter, but what he did, it’s not your future. I know you know - a part of your big brain, at least - what you’ve done for the people you love. And those people, they know it too. You’ve built a life in Starling full of people who not only wouldn’t leave you, but would hunt you down if you left.”

“Cooper left,” Felicity said. “He pretended to commit suicide and then he came back just to use me.”

“Cooper’s an asshole,” Oliver said. “Your taste in men hasn’t always been the best. In fact, before now, it’s been pretty abysmal.”

Felicity gave him a little shove. “ _You_ left. At least twice this year I thought you were dead or worse.”

“But when I could, when I had the chance, what was the first thing I did?” Oliver asked.

She thought of seeing his resurrection on the computer screen, the news of his return. She remembered flinging herself at a broad, leather covered chest. She remembered the sigh he’d breathed as he’d clasped her to him. “It’s okay. I’m okay,” he'd said.

“You came back,” she said.

“And every time someone has taken you, and I know it’s at least four times now - damn me for getting you into this - what happened?”

“You found me,” she said.

“And?”

“And brought me home.”

“Why do you think I did that?” he asked.

She shook her head, gave her shoulders a tiny shrug.

“It’s not just because that’s what the Arrow did, or because I need you to be safe, it’s because it’s not _my home_ if you’re not there,” Oliver said. “Does that sound like something someone with one foot out the door would say?

“I can’t make you believe me, Felicity,” he said finally. “I can only love you and be here for you long enough that some of those fears start to fade. And that’s what I intend to do.”

Felicity nodded. She didn’t know what to say to that, but she was so grateful for him for telling her.

“Now, come on, let’s get some sleep,” he said. “That nightmare probably won’t return tonight, but now that I know what it is, I can at least fight it with you. After the fact.”

He laid down on the bed and pulled her in his arms. She snaked her arms around his chest and grasped him as tightly as she could.

“Not going anywhere,” Oliver said, his hand on the small of her back. “But you hold onto whatever you like. It will still be here in the morning, I promise.”

Felicity closed her eyes, and willed her breath in and out. In. Out. Slowly, quietly. Oliver was there, the warm skin of his ragged back against her palms. She traced a couple of long scars with her fingertips, and then she was asleep. 


	3. Sara

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Oliver dreams, and confesses something to Felicity about Sara.

The sand on the private beach is reddish and warm, and he pours water over it so he can fashion it with his hands. He’s been wetting and shaping and forming for some time now. The sun is much lower in the sky, but he’s nearly done. Behind him, he knows, is a colorful beach umbrella and a very pretty woman. He can’t see her, but he knows she’s there because he hears her struggle with the stubborn lock on the cooler and finally open it. She’s pulling things out and arranging them on their picnic blanket, and he can’t remember what she packed, but he knows she included all his favorites, minus the ice cream. It’s too hot for ice cream. They’ll stop on the way home. She promised.

Her gentle voice reaches him and nestles inside his ear, “Oliver, are you done? You have to be nearly finished by now. You been working for such a long time.”

“Yes,” he says. “Yes, I’m done now.” He puts down the arrow he’s been using for the detail work on the face, and steps back to survey his handiwork.

His father’s face stares back at him from the sand, and he’s smiling, pleased. His arms are extended, gesturing either way along the beach, and his long legs reach almost into the ocean. His toes are an inch away from the lapping waves.

He feels disappointed that he couldn’t have built his father farther away from the water, but he needed the muck and wet to do it, so there’s no help for it. His father is there, larger than he actually was in life, and it has to be good enough.

“It’s wonderful, Oliver,” the voice - _her_ voice - whispers in his ear. “You should be proud. Can you come and rest with me now?”

He wants to, but he holds up his hands to show her the red muck. “I have to wash this off,” he says.

“Hurry,” she hums, and trails her warm fingers through his hair.

He turns to the ocean and wades in. It’s cool and refreshing, and he barely has to rub his hands together, the dirt falls off almost by itself. He cups his hands and splashes his face, and the salt smell invades his nostrils.

When he opens his eyes he’s surrounded by blue - the blue of the cloudless sky above him and the water below. The only disparity between them is in their movements. The azure above is still and serene, like a wall of shining glass, and the water at his waist is dotted with light, but troubled by the endless waves that are crashing against his body. The same waves that are coming for his father.

He glances over his shoulder to see if they’ve already come, but he’s too far out in the water now to be sure. He sees a flash of yellow out of the corner of his eye, and a bird circles down and lands gracefully on his shoulder. Her breast is red, and her sharp, translucent claws scratch at his skin as she settles there and then shakes her feathers out against his cheek.  

He wades out further until the two of them are just above the waves, and the bird becomes more and more agitated and begins to peck at his cheek as the water closes in. Finally, when the waves reach his chin, she flies off, and he dives below. The water stings his wounds, and he is strangely pleased to feel the pain.

He swims down to the bottom of the ocean bed. It’s a lot farther away than he thought it would be and he can’t seem to reach it. The water cools and darkens as he swims down and down, but then, amidst the gloom, he sees something.

It’s down there, a mountain cropping up from the ocean floor. No, not a mountain. There are mounds of things scattered about and then a larger hulk of something else. He swims closer. It’s the Queen’s Gambit with its nose buried in the dark ocean bottom. Most of it is in good enough condition, white and beautiful still, but there is a large hole in the hull with cracks radiating out in all directions from it.

Part of him wants to turn around and swim back as fast as he can, but his arms reach forward, digging at the water. He passes through the most violently shredded place, and then he is inside.

The saloon area of the yacht is well lit, and carpet under his feet is red and plush. He hears a noise coming from the corner, and he turns to see his father lounging there on one of the leather couches. He’s wearing a white button-down shirt under his blue sailing jacket, and on his lap is a woman with a sharp looking face and long brown hair. She is laughing and trailing strands of her hair across the jacket. Robert eases out from under her, stands up, and walks to him, guiding him towards a long hallway with polished wooden paneling. He gestures both behind himself and and then beyond him down the hall. He affectionately puts one hand around his back and pats him on his chest with the other. “You know, son,” he says, “that is not going to finish well. For either of them or for you.”

And then he sees the door. It’s recessed and at the end of the hallway, but its handle is visible. The hall narrows further and further as he walks and then staggers towards it, holding onto the railing to keep himself upright. The ship is shaking underneath his feet, so it’s slow going.

He reaches for the handle to his stateroom, and he knows inside there is a blond girl in her underwear on a soft bed, but it’s not the right blond girl. It’s the on--

The ship lurches and the door flies open in front of him. There she is, the other blonde, and she _is_ in her underwear, her black robe sliding off one shoulder. But her eyes are closed, and from her abdomen three arrows extend. And she’s not on the bed, but floating, floating behind glass. She’s encased in a large cylinder, like a beaker without an opening. Her legs trail down, her bare feet almost touch the bottom.

Sara’s eyes snap open, and her voice, muffled by the glass, accuses him. “Why am I here, Ollie?” she asks. “You said you knew biology, and I died. So why am I still here?”

He opens his mouth to answer her - to say what, he doesn’t know - but then the glass shatters abruptly in his direction. He turns away and is aware of it cutting into his shoulder and his cheek, and there’s that welcome pain again. He’s glad to feel _it_ , though, instead of the fear as Sara rises from the pool of water on the floor and flies at him like a wraith. Her robe is now white, and her face holds all the fury of resurrection.

 

>>\--->

 

“Sara!”

Oliver was thrashing about, murmuring Sara’s name under his breath in an increasingly agitated way. Felicity sat on the sofa’s arm and debated about whether to wake him up. It was Sunday, the team had had a blistering week of fighting, and, as a result, Oliver’s knee was swollen to nearly twice its normal size. Earlier in the afternoon, she’d forced him onto the couch, wrapped and iced the knee, and given him a sedative so he’d stay _still_. Finally he’d fallen asleep.

But even asleep, Oliver wasn’t cooperating.

She slipped off the sofa arm and went to kneel by his head. Her face was level with his, and she ran her fingers lightly through his hair and took his hand and, holding it in both of hers, began massaging slowly up his arm. “Oliver,” she said.

His eyes opened, and she stared into their blue black. His pupils were very wide, but as he blinked in the light, they receded into the lighter blue ring of his irises.

“Hey,” he said.

“You were having a nightmare,” she said.

“Was I screaming?” he asked.

“Just upset,” Felicity said. “You were starting to thrash about on that knee, though.”

He smiled. “We can’t have that now, can we, Nurse Felicity?”

She pressed a finger in his dimple. “Nope. I didn’t drug you for nothing.”

“You always have your reasons for drugging me,” he said.  

She wrinkled her nose at him. “My mission success rate is only about 50 percent, though,” she said. “And I’d have to put this time down in the failure column.”

“I’ll be good,” Oliver said. “I promise.”

“You'd better. You have to stay _off that knee_. You know that.” She still had his hand in one of hers, and she held it up to her cheek. He gave her a soft look, and she let herself relax in his gaze. He could gaze; she’d give him that. He had a real talent for it.

After a minute she asked, “Do you remember your dream?” She tried very hard not to let his dreams about other women bother her. She knew they weren’t erotic, that they were his brain’s way of working through his tangled emotions about what had happened to them. Guilt, survivor’s guilt, regret: it wasn’t subconscious cheating or longing. Still, it wasn’t her favorite thing to hear him moan some other woman’s name.

He hauled himself up on one elbow. “It was about Sara. It didn’t make a lot of sense, though. It wasn’t a memory or anything.”

“You were saying her name over and over.”

“She was dead, and then she...wasn’t,” he said. “She was on the Gambit.”

“With you, I know,” Felicity said. “That’s really old news.”

“No, in the dream. We were on the sunken Gambit. I swam there and saw my father and Isabel Rochev...and Sara. He warned me about both of them.”

“He warned you about Sara?”

“About sleeping with her while I was with Laurel, yes. He really did that, and it was good advice. Given certain later revelations, I realize he probably knew what he was talking about.”

Felicity shifted her legs on the carpet and pushed a toe into a leg of the couch. They rarely talked about Sara, and Oliver _never_ talked about his cheating on Laurel. It wasn’t exactly a safe topic to discuss with your girlfriend: how you banged multitudes of women while you were in a previous relationship.

“Well, you loved her,” she finally said.

Oliver sat up on the couch, carefully extending his leg and placing it down again when he was settled. “I didn’t, though,” he said slowly. “I think _you_ think I was in love with Sara, but I wasn’t. I never was. I mean, I loved Sara. I’d known her forever. She was Laurel’s little sister, always around in the background.

“But what we had - it was always more about Laurel than it was about us.”

“Laurel?”

He nodded. “The Gambit debacle was about her for both of us,” he said. “It was a bad time for Laurel and me. Things were really tense. I was tense. Laurel had taken it into her head that she was going to be Mrs. Oliver Queen.”

Felicity lifted her eyebrows. “Did you give her a reason to think that?”

“No,” Oliver said quickly. “She was delusional. I wasn’t even _close to thinking_ of marriage then, and, anyway, there’s only ever been on--.” He cleared his throat and shook his head. “It wasn’t going to happen. But once Laurel’s made her mind up, she doesn’t take no for an answer.”

She tilted her head at him. “Like you.”

His eyebrows came down at her, the one slanting almost all the way down to the bridge of his nose. “Look, this is an ugly story, and I look like a dick…I was a dick to Laurel...to a bunch of girls, actually.”

“I already have a pretty decent picture of Playboy Ollie in my head,” Felicity said. “You made the news. Multiple times. I’ve seen the footage - the one with the black dot over your --.” She made a circular motion at his crotch.

He grimaced. “Yeah, that was me. Anyway, Laurel was pressuring me to find an apartment with her, to move in together. I could see there was an outline in her mind. Dating first, then this apartment, then a wedding...and I couldn’t do it. I _wasn’t_ going to do it. I actually looked into joining the Peace Corps, if you can believe it, but it turns out you have to have graduated from college and be an engineer or metallurgist or something practical. I had maybe two years worth of credits from my four colleges combined, and no useful skills _at all_.

“So when my dad announced he was taking the Gambit on a business trip to China, I told him I was coming along. I figured, worst case scenario, I could live in China for awhile, maybe a decade or so. Until Laurel got the message.”

“Why did Sara come with you?”

“She was mad at Laurel,” he said. “Our whole relationship was one or the other person reacting to something Laurel did. She came home from college at spring break, and they had a fight. We ran into each other at a party later on that night, and things got a little out of hand. Then we started texting, and we’d talk on the phone. I liked...getting away with something. She did too.

“I saw her the day before we were supposed to sail. And I just blurted out an invitation. I think it was my alternate plan to expatriating. Sara was just there. She wanted to tag along - it was an adventure to her - and there was no bigger weapon I could have chosen to shoot down my relationship with Laurel. If I’d bothered to think about the consequences for any of us...but, of course, I didn’t.”

“But she loved you,” Felicity said.

“Not romantically, no,” he said. “She had a little crush she told me about one time, but I wasn’t exactly great boyfriend material back in the day, and Sara and I were too much alike. We were both wild and carefree and selfish. And dumb, really dumb. I’m not actually sure she was ever in love.”

“But what about Nyssa?”

“ _Nyssa_ was in love with Sara, but Sara was - I don’t want to say incapable, she wasn’t, she had a good heart - but she wasn’t ready. Nyssa took her off the streets. She’d already lost everything, died twice, spent a year helping a madman perform medical experiments on human beings, and watched Slade go insane and brutally kill a host of people. She was homeless and starving to death. I think she’d been raped, probably multiple times. Nyssa kept her safe and gave her love, and Sara needed that. But she left Nyssa to come back to Starling, and she had no intention of going back to her.”

“Because she had you.”

He shook his head. “Because she didn’t want to. She hated the League. She was ashamed of everything she’d had to do to survive. I wasn’t a factor in her decision.”

“Oliver,” Felicity said, unconvinced. It was hard for her to imagine Sara having all this and not appreciating it. She’d known Oliver as a protector too, and as the kind friend who’d believed in her at her lowest and tried to help.

He pressed her hand. “You think she loved me because _you love me_. But I was just Ollie to her, and she was just Laurel’s little sister and a comrade in arms to me. She never made me feel lighter or more hopeful. She didn’t make me want to be a better person. We just...knew what we were getting with each other, and it was enough for her for awhile. And sort of enough for me.”

“Sort of?” She wasn’t successful in keeping the hopeful note out of her voice.

“Come here,” he said, and pulled her up next to him. She leaned into his side. He moved his leg to the coffee table and propped it up there. “When my mother...when you told me what my mother had done, how deep her rabbit hole went...I felt alone. There were so many lies. Too many.” On the back of her hand he traced the shallow indentations of her knuckles.

“I wasn’t ready for you. A part of me knew how I felt about you, but there was something in my mind that simply _shut that down_ , if the thought even cropped up. You had to be alive and safe because I _needed_ you. From the beginning, you were different, and you became...irreplaceable to me. There was no one else who could…”

“Hack a prison system?” The deflection just slipped out from habit; she’d been waiting a long time to hear this, but it was almost too much.

“Reboot my system,” he said seriously. “The whole thing, new motherboard, new operating system, new virus scan. Am I getting this computer metaphor right?” He looked at her for confirmation, but she couldn’t nod because there was something in her throat got in the way. The longer he talked, the bigger it got.

He went on. “Make a suicidal serial killer into a functional person. Make me want to live so I can see your face again the next morning. Sara couldn’t do any of that. She was my friend, and I loved her, but we were sad together instead of alone, and that was all. She all but told me to be with you.”

“She did?”

“She did. And she was right.” He kissed the top of her head. “It took me awhile to be brave enough to take her advice, though. You can be kind of scary, you know.”

“Me?” She laughed.

“Yes, you,” he said. “You have a large collection of very sharp-looking shoes, for one.”

“True,” she said. “But I’ve never thrown any of them at _you_.”

“Yet.”

“Okay, yet.”

“And you have the biggest heart I’ve ever seen,” he said. “It’s like the Blob. Who can fight that? You can’t fight that. It can swallow a guy whole and make him forget all the other stuff.”

“All the other stuff?” She burrowed further into his side.

“Other stuff?” he asked. “There’s other stuff besides just being here with you? I can’t remember it.”

“I can’t remember it either,” she said, smiling.

“See? Resistance is futile. No one can fight the Blob.”

“You’re not going to call me the Blob,” she said. “That’s not going to be my nickname. Blobbing is not my superpower.”

“I’m afraid it is,” he said.

“You should be afraid,” she said.

“Oh, I am,” he said. “I’m more than a little afraid of how I feel about you.” And he leaned down and pressed his lips to hers. She twined her arms around his neck and forgot all about Sara and nightmares and anything that wasn’t Oliver. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I got to play with dream imagery in this chapter - which was fun. There's a lot of talking too. I feel like Sara and what happened with her is something they eventually would have talked about. So here they do.


End file.
